It was decided to not do a national Fall roundtable due to the economy, and the expensive nature of travel in general.  Instead, we are going to make a strong push for some GREAT regional roundtables in the fall. DC is hosting one such round table at McLean Bible Church in Vienna, VA. The cost for this event is $35.00 and you can register at dc.citrt.org. Finally the deadline for registration is 10-20-09.

We are having a meet and greet dinner the night before (Sunday the 25th) for people that plan to come into town early. Be sure to indicate that on the registration so we can plan accordingly. There is no additional charge if you are coming the night before.

So, now you are thinking, what is my part.  Right?  Well I’m glad you asked…  The goal of the Church IT Roundtable is to further community, relationships, and information sharing among IT folks in the church.  So your part in all of this is to spread the word.  Get in touch with the IT folks at churches you have relationships with and let them know about the event.

Register at dc.citrt.org.

Michael Smith posted his notes from the May 2008 DC CITRT.

May08 DC-CITRT

We had our best turnout yet for DC CITRT, thank God and thanks to our hosts at McLean Bible.  I apologize that I am not the best at taking notes and have a weak memory, so if anyone would like to add to this please feel free.

• Content Management Systems (CMS) – SiteOrganic was definitely the crowd favorite, Drupal and Joomla! were mentioned.
• Wireless – Cisco recommended, Proxim mentioned.
• Helpdesk – ServiceDesk works well, Spiceworks not bad for the price.
• Multi-Campus – McLean went with satellite video, large up-front cost, small recurring cost and scaling (adding sites) cost.
• Work/life balance – Read Boundaries.

David Bebawy has put together Ctech, a Coptic Roundtable of sorts up at the Archdiocese in NJ on Tuesday, May 27 @ 6:30 PM.

DC CITRT, tomorrow 11:30am at McLean Bible.

Fall 2008 Church IT Roundtable, October 8-10 at Seacost Church, Mount Pleasant, SC.

Rob Thrush, the Director of Information Technology at McLean Bible Church.

Marvin Haines, the Assistant Director of Information Technology at McLean Bible Church.  Looks like Marvin has been blogging for a while, but I just discovered it now.

Welcome Rob and Marvin to the Church IT Blogging world!  Make sure to add them to your RSS reader.

Catch all of us at the upcoming DC Church IT Roundtable.

Rob Thrush and his team at McLean Bible will be hosting the next DC Church IT Roundtable on Thursday, May 22nd at 11:30 AM.

McLean Bible Church Tysons Campus – 8925 Leesburg Pike, Vienna, VA 22182
Room 1410 (off first level entrance by the water falls)

Please comment below if you will be joining us and if you have any special requests for topics.

What’s a Roundtable Discussion? (Taken from Jason Lee’s Blog)
A roundtable is a peer-learning event where the participants are both teachers and learners. A roundtable is small enough to emphasize interactive learning, led by a facilitator and peer, includes participants who have an affinity with each other, and does not include a strong agenda beyond sharing knowledge. The participants set the agenda, and interaction among participants takes precedent over presentation by “experts.” In fact, in one-way or another, most of the roundtable participants are already experts. In this group, we intend to learn from each other about how to better resource, equip, and train ministries in the areas of computer hardware, networking, server support, web services/sites, telecom services, etc. It will be geeky and fun.

Please see citrt.org for additional church IT community resources.

Just wrapped up MinistryTECH and CITRT, it was truly an amazing time of fellowship and learning from my fellow Church IT brethren. Today’s quiet time reflects what is on my heart…

we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17

PowerPoint Download

Looks like our friend Nick Nicholaou over at MBS, has some company in the local admin debate (full article) – the Google Enterprise Blog highlights an interview in CIO magazine with Douglas Merrill, Google’s CIO.

A few quotes from the article:

• Google information systems believes in choice, not control. The goal of choice is to let your talent express their talent in the most effective way they can.
• We really believe in choice, not control, so the number of things employees can’t do is pretty small. And then the infrastructure is pretty smart and pretty self-healing. Our machines come already imaged with security controls. People can install their own software if they want to. We have lots of remote access options, and we assume people will work from cafés and other things, so we do lots to make that possible.
• My ability to do choice not control is profoundly affected by some of the changes in the security model…I have a very big focus on defense at depth—lots and lots of different things in the infrastructure and the applications that protect themselves.

I think I am slowly being swayed towards the choice side, but I am not fully convinced yet.